"if you make a precious environment, then what's inside is precious, too."

Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Budgeting: Receipts

For any of you who are regular readers of Unemployed Brooklyn, you know your MatchGirl and Boyfriend have fallen upon some tough times. So yesterday's menu plan, meal planning in general, is going to be even more important. And instead of a matter of convenience and organization, it will really be a way to make sure we stay on track when it comes to our budget.

Before Boyfriend lost his job, it's not like either of us was pulling in a lot of money, so we were still budget conscious, of course, but now that it's my salary and him dealing with some bureaucracy at the Department of Labor Unemployment Office we need to be even more cognizant of where our pennies go.

To that end, gentle readers, we've decide to share our food spending with the blog-o-sphere. Below are our scanned receipts from July 25th through July 31st. It includes grocery items and food purchased and eaten out, right down to the iced coffee.

We hope that by saving these receipts, reviewing them and sharing them with all of you, that we will be able to pare down our budget, still be able to save, and keep moving forward.

In addition to the above receipts (click and you should be able to see them big), we spent $40 on Saturday evening on an unexpected dinner out with a visiting friend, $20 on brunch on Sunday (which included, for both, our food, coffee, one cocktail each and tip!) and $13 on a pound of Ploughshares coffee, which Boyfriend is turing into cold brew concentrate to sate my morning iced coffee thirst, and there should be enough for his hot coffee needs, too.

Think we can do better next week? We'll see, when the receipts are all in!

What do you think? Would you be able to do this?

Any tips on how we can cut back on our food spending? Leave them in the comments.